Works Marina Rises from the Ashes?

Bodywork

This place is like a Aladdin's cave.  Yes, that is an Ex Works TR7 V8 - the current owner Mike Jones - emailed the following description to correct my previous erroneous words on it.  "The car is SJW 533S and its provenance is well documented in a number of publications and books.  The best known photo of the car is featured on the front of "Drive It The Complete Book of Rallying" by Stuart Turner  & Tony Mason first published in October 1978 by Haynes Publishing Group.  This photo is captioned "The front cover shows a works TR7V8 competing in the 1978 Esso-Lombard Scottish Rally. The driver is Tony Pond and the co-driver Fred Gallagher. Unfortunately the car rolled when in tenth overall position" . The same photo was used on the front cover of the November 1978 issue of Car & Car Conversions - featuring the 1978 RAC Rally guide. Rimmer Brothers also use this photo on the rear cover of their TR7/8 spares catalogue".

If you check the picture of the Marina above right, you'll see that there are three horizontal bars welded to the lower valence.  These look like they were designed to take the front mount of the long ST sump guard.

The yellow Mini is the worlds last homologated Mini, you'll remember it competing in the  Australian round of the WRC some years back.  It will may be donating its Arden 8 port motor to the Marina!  The owners are in discussion with Castrol to use the original livery and maybe some sponsorship.  

Was this done by Special Tuning, or is this a quick attempt by a previous owner to give the car a history?  If you know for sure then let me know soonest.

Under Bonnet

Note the welded plate under the brake servo and the nicely crafted engine steady bar bracket.  We didn't get a shot of it, but there is no petrol pipe inlet tube hole in the nearside inner wing, which means that the car is a very early "suicide petrol pipe" chassis.

If you scroll up to the picture of the front of the car you'll see that there are no air intake holes in the nearside front panel.  There is a plated up hole in the offside panel though - any ideas?

Front Suspension

The front shocker looks to have an normal lever arm with the angle slightly forward, rather than the v early type that point backwards.  To the left of the non standard bump stop you can see an unusual bracket welded into the inner arch.  It is formed from a piece of U section steel and has three sets of holes, probably for different telescopic shock absorber positions - did ST do it?

In the workshop we were shown a pair of ST lower telescopic shocker brackets.  These match exactly the ones in the ST brochures and were the forerunners of the Ital lower shock brackets from the 1980's.

The bottom trunnions were a mix of nearside standard and offside Walford trunnions, which we pointed out.  The handling would have been weird with negative camber one side and positive camber the other.

Rear Suspension - skid plate

The front rear spring hanger has been "skidded", that is to say that skid plates have been added protect the spring and bush mount.  The quality of the work is very poor and is likely to have been a post Works mod at some time.  The third shot also gives a side view of the front trailing arm mount.

Rear Suspension - Trailing arms

The first and second shots clearly show the arrangement of the trailing arm and its bracket reinforcement.  The ladder  section acts in tension and appeared quite flimsy. Underneath is some strengthening that is welded into the chassis.  The chassis work is pretty good gas seam welding, where the ladder arrangement is attached at either end the welding is horrid.  Also it doesn't match the drawings in the ST manual for the conversion, was it an early one off, or a later bodge up?

Petrol Tank

Special Tuning listed a fibreglass petrol tank cover and the MSA homologation papers also show it.  The rally prep people have had a new one made up in kevlar/carbon fibre - pretty isn't it.  They could be persuaded to make some more if anyone would like one - give me a call and I'll chat them up for you.

Other things

You'll have noticed the rear springs and the axle are both standard Marina saloon (albeit with trailing arm brackets).  Later cars used the Morris J4 van axle/Marina 10 cwt van axle, these were the same design as the older MGA/MGB/A60 banjo axle and were much stronger and had better rallying ratios.  There are several possibilities, (i) that AOX car used standard components, (ii) that a later owner installed standard components or (iii) that it is a standard early non rally car that always had standard components.  I could believe the last option, except that we know for sure that it was sold by BL competitions dept. with them listed as the first registered owner.

There are various areas on the car that are seam welded to add strength (quality welding), however the extra panels fitted to later ST cars and the C&CC car are not present.  Does that mean that it's not AOX or does it mean that they were developed later than 1971?